As the Internet has matured, web services and web applications have proliferated. Some of the growth is based on the growth and rapid development of scalable remote computing services that are easily configurable and offered at low cost. Rather than build a server farm or obtain computing system infrastructure, users, whether individuals, companies, universities, or the like, may host their web services using fast and inexpensive remote computing resources instead often hosted and managed by third parties. Users may purchase use of computing resources, including physical and virtual computer processing entities, providing units of computing power, storage, and databases on demand. The units of computing power may provide access to protected resources and data stored in the storage and/or databases.
Web services utilize a variety of security measures to ensure that clients accessing protected resources are authenticated and authorized to access the protected resources. There are a variety of different ways to provide secure access to protected resources, and this presents a problem for clients. In one example, a client may request access and data from hundreds of web services, each web service having a different way of providing secure access. The client must identify the specific security measures that are used for each web service. Conventional methods of client access to protected resources provided by web services have reached their limits and may not be sustainable.